In day-long meet, leaders fine tune 2019 tactics, take stock of progress made and chalk out plans for year-end polls in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh & MP.
New Delhi: In the day-long meeting of its chief ministers and deputy chief ministers Tuesday, presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fine-tuned its 2019 Lok Sabha poll strategy, iterating its now-predictable twin poll planks of welfare and Hindutva.
On one hand, Modi and the party emphasised on the central government’s welfare, pro-poor initiatives such as the steep hike in MSP for crops, PM housing scheme, Ujjwala, Saubhagya and Ayushmaan Bharat. On the other hand, the BJP gave more heft to its aim of driving out “illegal infiltrators” in Assam from Bangladesh, while also pushing for the contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016.
The meeting, where 15 CMs and seven deputy CMs of the party were present, comes as the BJP is gearing up to fight incumbency in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh at the end of the year. The last such meet was held on 28 February where all CMs had been given governance and implementation targets.
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According to party sources, Tuesday’s meet took stock of the progress made so far besides chalking out a comprehensive state-wise strategy for the upcoming polls.
Welfare measures & Assam’s NRC
“We discussed the party strategy across states in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, while holding detailed discussions on the state assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh,” Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh said.
Singh said the party discussed the Central government’s initiatives for the poor and backward, such as the MSP hike and various welfare schemes, along with its decision to grant constitutional status to the OBC commission as well as what it claims to be its pro-SC/ST steps.
He added the PM took stock of the progress and implementation status of key welfare schemes in different states.
“We also discussed the NRC in Assam. There is no place for foreign infiltrators in our country,” Singh said, adding that the meeting backed the party’s support to the Citizenship Amendment Bill and emphasised the BJP’s belief that Hindu minorities persecuted in neighbouring countries should get a place in India.
The deportation of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants had been the BJP’s key campaign theme ahead of the 2016 assembly election in Assam. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is now being updated under a Supreme Court monitored exercise to keeping 24 March, 1971 as the cut-off to identify those who immigrated to Assam illegally from Bangladesh after that date.
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In the meanwhile, the BJP has been pushing for the Citizenship Amendment Bill, which grants citizenship to illegal migrants who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, strategically leaving out Muslim immigrants.
The BJP has been accused by its critics of attempting to further its Hindutva agenda in the pretext of updating NRC and trying to grant citizenship to illegal Hindu immigrants.
Tuesday’s meet, thus, clearly lays out BJP’s 2019 electoral strategy of appealing to the poor and backward, especially in rural areas, on the basis of its welfare initiatives, while pandering to its core pro-Hindutva constituency.